


A Never-Ending Life

by afteriwake



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what his personal hell was like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Never-Ending Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **azardarkstar**. The prompt for this one is “He’ll never understand what it means to wait for the end to come. Or wishing it would get here sooner.” Went AU during the Deicide arc, where Gin did not die when Ichigo arrived in Karakura Town.

He hadn't learned what true hell was until he received his punishment from the Central 46 for his role in Aizen's betrayal. He would rather have just died then be living through the punishment he had been given. Having died with Rangiku by his side would have been a good way to die, even if he hadn't avenged her. The one person in the world he cared for most, the one woman he could actually say he loved, crying over him. Yes, it would have been sad, but...it would have been preferable to leave her sad than to live like this.

Kurotsuchi had had such pleasure in crafting the modified gigai he inhabited. For every ten years it was in the world of the living, it would physically age one year. He didn't even look like himself, nor did he look his own age. He looked like a teenager, with unruly black hair and green eyes. At least he wasn't put in the body of a female, he had mused, and there was no voice modifier on it. He sounded like himself, which had startled the first person he had come across, the voice of an adult coming out of what he assumed a fifteen-year-old would look like.

He had been told that while the gigai aged it would also break down. One day something might happen, like he'd break a leg or cut a finger and it would never heal completely. He had already twisted his knee, years ago when he was getting used to the new body, and found that walking too much or standing too much made the knee hurt. It had been...twenty years? Thirty years? He wasn't sure. All he knew was that he'd had to leave Karakura Town because a kid that still looks like a kid after so long and doesn't begin to look like a man draws attention after a while.

Some of the shinigami he knew would be jealous. He had to travel now, every few years, and start all over again because he couldn't age. But he had finally decided to settle in Tokyo, in a place so big he could get lost. He at least looked like more of a man now. The gigai had facial hair so instead of the clean shaven look he had sported as a shinigmai he had stubble to appear older. He had been alive hundreds of years, and now had to look like a teenager. He would never get used to it.

And the gigai was unkillable. He'd tried that first, tried to hang himself in an effort to circumvent his punishment, but he'd still been able to breathe and had simply been left with deep marks around his neck. He'd stepped in front of a moving truck but the some Samaritan pulled him out of harms way and so he decided not to try that again. He'd tried poisoning himself but it did nothing more than rob him of his appetite for a day or so. Kurotsuchi was a bastard, he decided after that first week, and so was Aizen.

Oh, if he had hated Aizen before it was worse now. Aizen had imprisonment in the deepest darkest hole they could find in Soul Society, but he was still there. And he probably didn't care about his punishment. He was still the same smug bastard he had always been, and always would be, believing he was better. At least Tousen had had a reason, and at least he had had a reason as well. Revenge was not a good reason, but it was a _reason_ , whereas Aizen had done what he did for power. And the power had been taken away, but he was not left a shell of a broken man. He had been defiant until the end.

He had heard about it from the Fourth Division medical workers who nursed him back to health. Never was he allowed any visitors, and he had been cuffed to his bed and fed through an IV for days before someone would feed him food. He had longed to see Rangiku, to let her know how sorry he was that he hadn't been able to avenge her properly. Finally, the Lieutenant of that division, Kotetsu, had taken pity on him and listened to him dictate a letter to Rangiku once the breathing tube was out. So at least he knew she knew. Or he hoped he did, at any rate.

If there was one thing he hated about this punishment more than anything else was that by the time his gigai aged and broke completely, releasing his soul back to Soul Society, Rangiku would probably be gone, on her own part of the never ending cycle of souls arriving and souls leaving. And even if she was brought back to Earth, there was no guarantee he'd ever find her, that he would ever hear her voice, see her smile, feel her touch. If he had looked the same it might have been different, but that sadist Kurotsuchi had made it so that would never happen.

And so he existed, day by day. Sometimes he felt despair, sometimes rage, but most of it was apathy. He had gone back to the ways of his childhood, with the scrounging and the scavenging, though with all the experience he had accumulated in Soul Society occasionally he would get a real job and take a break. But as soon as he would get settled, someone would notice that he looked a little too young, or they'd want official documents of some sort or another, and then he'd be off and it would start all over again.

He just wanted it all to end. He wanted his punishment to cease, so he could perhaps maybe hopefully see Rangiku again. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and inhale her scent and apologize every day until she understood exactly how sorry he was for all of it, for all the pain, for all the heartache. He wanted her, and the hope that maybe, in some way, he would see her again was all that got him through the monotony of what appeared to be a never-ending life.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Lifetime Before Now](https://archiveofourown.org/works/537564) by [afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake)




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